Engagement rate

Engagement rate is how actively an audience interacts with a piece of content — likes, comments, shares, saves — measured against how many people saw it or how many people follow the account. It turns a raw count into a rate that can be compared across posts of very different reach.

An account's own median engagement rate, not an industry average, is the number worth tracking: it says whether this week's posts did better or worse than this account usually does.

It is most useful compared against an account's own recent posts, not against a category figure from elsewhere — the same reasoning a baseline is built on.

A post can have strong reach and a weak engagement rate at the same time — plenty of people saw it, few of them did anything — which is a different problem from a post nobody saw at all, and it calls for a different fix.

A common mistake is comparing an account's engagement rate against an industry figure quoted online — those numbers mix accounts of every size, format mix and posting habit, so an account can be doing well by its own history and still sit under a published average, or the reverse.

It is also worth reading beside reach rather than alone: a rising reach with a falling engagement rate usually means a video reached people outside its usual audience, who engage less by default, not that the same audience suddenly cared less. A format that scores well on engagement rate but poorly on reach is worth watching separately too, since it usually means an existing audience likes the format more than new viewers ever get the chance to.

Where it comes from

Sprout Social's own glossary defines it this way.

Engagement rates are metrics that track how actively involved with your content your audience is.

Read the source: Sprout Social — What Is Engagement Rate?.